Price's work showed that traditional diets included both wild harvested and agriculturally produced foods. The wild harvested foods included plant based foods, fish, game, insects, and other animal based products. Like wild harvested foods, agriculturally produced foods were based upon both plants and animals.
The wild harvested foods varied significantly by geography. The closer to the equator, the greater the percentage of wild harvested foods that were plant based. The farther from the equator, the greater the percentage of animal based foods. Plant foods included leaves, tubers, fruits, roots, and to a lesser degree, seeds. Animal based foods included fish, shellfish, roe, insects, and game of all sorts, from small to large. Animal organ meats and fats were highly prized. All of these foods were "naturally" raised. The plants and animals were not influenced by man-made chemicals. The soils where the wild harvested plants that humans consumed and the plants that animals consumed were largely virgin soils with natural sources of fertility, including original mineral materials and naturally occuring organic matter, either deposited directly or added upon through either wind or water based sedimentation. Mother nature did not use petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, nor laboratory based hormones, antibiotics, or other pharmaceuticals.
The agriculturally produced foods that were part of traditional diets were raised in either a cultivated, or semi-wild environment, depending on the type of food and the geography of the people. Animals for the animal based products were raised in different ways and on different diets that were in alignment with the natural diet of the animals. For example, ruminants like cattle, sheep, and goats were grazed on grass and other browse, where they had a wide diversity of plant materials to eat. The ruminants were not fed grain or other animal sources of food. Omnivores like poultry and swine were largely scavengers, eating leftovers from human food consumption, fresh plant foods, seeds, nuts, insects, and animal sources of food as well. None of these animals received hormones, antibiotics, or other pharmaceuticals. The animals either deposited the manure as they grazed and wandered, or the people involved with caretaking used the animal manure as a source of fertility for the raising of food. These animals were not raised in large confinement operations with extreme animal, animal waste, and animal disease concentration.
Agriculturally produced plant foods were either grown as perennials - trees and bushes, or annuals in cultivated ground. In either case, fertility came from the natural fertility of the soil, augmented by decomposition of organic matter, periodic deposition of silt through flooding or wind, and by otherwise manuring from animal and even human sources or manure. People knew that plants grew better in rich soil and located their agriculture in areas where fertility would be most easily maintained, or they rotated their plantings to new ground periodically to maintain production. What these plants did not have were inputs in the forms of petroleum based fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc.
Traditional plants foods and animal foods were nutrient dense, due to both their genetics and the richly mineralized soils that were their foundation. They were not contaminated by endocrine disrupting and cancer causing chemicals. The soils were mineralized not only in the macro nutrient spectrum, but also broadly across a range of trace minerals. In other words, the foods were good foods without all of the damaging tagalongs common to current conventionally raised foods.
So how do you raise good food? It starts with the soil. Both soil mineralization and the soil biology that supports soil mineralization are key. That is for soils that grow human food directly and that grow feedstuff for animals that produce foods for humans (e.g. eggs, dairy) or animals that are consumed directly. In addition to agriculturally raised foods, wild harvested foods like fish, game and other wild plant materials can provide the foundation for nutrient dense foods that are good for humans to eat and will optimize their health and extend life.
